First and foremost - usually we release an episode alongside the results, but this time around things got in the way of making that possible. At the moment we don't know when the episode will be released, so please be patient. For the time being, feel free to download the pack of contest levels.
When a contest is stacked with quality stuff, there's the inevitability of the medal selection also being massive. This contest has about as many medals as all previous medal-granting contests combined! We hope you enjoy them. It's not QUITE alphabetical order this time, but it's presented in the same order as the spreadsheet and presentations, wahoo!
And that's it for the rewards! Thanks again to all for participating. Leave all feedback, thoughts and remarks you have on your mind in this thread! We'll see you next contest!
I just want to start by saying that it was an absolute honor to judge these levels. The submissions were fantastic and you should all be proud of your work. I thoroughly enjoyed what this contest had to offer and I hope everyone that plays these levels does too.
A big congratulations to MDA and Seta! My Eyes Shine Bright is a phenomenal level and my favorite of the bunch.
Congratulations to 7NameSame and Quine, too. Recto was such a unique and fun level. And of course, The Reservatorium had such a creative idea in its item reserve box manipulation.
Big props to everyone for making such good levels and receiving these rightfully high scores.
This contest's lineup was a clear improvement over Chocolate Contest X1's, which I had already found to be okay, but this one just boasts a much better lineup.
I'm so happy! The contest was pretty AWESOME to participate in! Learned lots of new things and did some cool tricks I've never did before... and even when I hit Top #25, my work still paid off! Congratulations everybody, this was fun and games!
While I didn't make it to the top 20, I am pleased with my score. Congrats to everyone, especially Mr. DoubleA and SetaYoshi for winning! There were so many stellar levels in this contest. I'm excited to hopefully see an episode released.
Somewhere, Joey, Valtteri, Quill, and probably even Redigit are smiling at how far SMBX has come...
i'll admit, i didn't expect third at all, it's kind of surreal. congrats to MrDoubeA & SetaYoshi and 7NameSam, they were well deserved placings. i didn't really dip my toes into other levels, as i was saving it for the episode set to release after. that said, seeing the previews from others, everyone seemed to bring their A game. the reviews from the judges reflect as much as well. i had a ton of fun, and i hope others did too! i've collected my thoughts on my own placing and other things pertaining to my level in the spoiler below.
i'm just flabbergasted at my placing. i hadn't expected to really get judge scores quite that high, so this was surprising in all honesty. i tried applying my knowledge of game deign i've picked up over time and it payed dividends in the end it seems (blocking, thoughtful design, ect.). honestly, i feel like i've improved tons and learned alot since my last level just while making the reservatorium, so i was content getting any scores above 50 going in. the reviews were very insightful and told me quite a bit about the strengths and weaknesses of the level (it didn't occur to me the star could get stuck in a wall, an easy fix too) i'm glad to have access to them for that reason. they were also a treat to read the reactions of certain things, hah hah! i didn't expect a lot from the reservatorium personally. after all, i only made to stave off boredom during a lull in DAE's dev time. Darkonius kept telling me to not doubt myself though, and he was right it seems. to cap off this train of thought, the last level i made for a con was like 40th out of 60 (Cake Walk to be exact). that was in like 2015 though, guess my level design sensibilities have improved to say the least.
mainly, i wanted to go with a portal-esq vibe, though my biggest inspiration was a level i saw in yump 1/2 that abused yoshi mechanics to the most extreme (i think it was a yump level anyhow). i wanted to go a different direction with the graphics color wise but ran out of free time to redirect to my preferred colors (a blue-ish purple , like the reserve boxes in X2), but this seemed to pay off in the end. in addition to that, i wanted to have an "announcer" like portal as well that referenced other entries in choccy con as well, but ran short on time and used the little i had at the end for the ending jokes.
Congratulations to MrDoubleA and SetaYoshi!
7NameSam and KBM-Quine too!
and also to everyone who participated!
after reading the reviews, I am kinda surprised that my level got more than 25 points!
I am also surprised that Enjl paid more attention to the "monster" rather than the red coins and the key locks
the "boss" was scrapped because I didn't had enough time (sheesh! I forgot to remove the messages referring to the boss)
It is true that the level was submitted mid-development (I learned my lesson)
I don't know why there are only 6 red coins in the section, it was surely my fault
I also got some motivation to participate in other contests too!
I am also surprised that Enjl paid more attention to the "monster" rather than the red coins and the key locks
I didn't comment much on those because I figured the others would have plenty enough to say about The Softlock Room. In hindsight, it may have been worth a mention, since the level does recommend you visit The Softlock Room before going to the exit.
The last red coin is on a hidden layer that has no activation event, BTW.
The sad thing about the medal was I purposely tried to make it easier. My intent originally was to start the level easy teaching the player about vertical wrap then build upon it. Originally, there was going to be twice as many rooms. Notice how all paths lead to the same final room? I was originally having it set up like "1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5 with star coins only in sections 1, 2, and 3 and have 4 and 5 as a wind-down. I ended up scampering that idea due to my job throwing so many concective 16 hour shifts on me and not having a computer during almost half of the contests life span. Congratulations to the winners and Enjl nailed my plans. Too bad i could not follow through to IRL problems.
i tried my best to moderate myself and i still got universal complaints about the difficulty, had this been on the level of my maglx3 submission i imagine it would've scored dead last ><"
regarding the other stuff:
- i can't quite figure out where terrain clipping is an issue, as i looked over the level and can't find any location where ample space (3 blocks) isn't given, so if any of the judges could point me to the exact setups they're talking about, i'd be grateful
- the left-right direction rotation was meant to emulate the reverse of a wave function (sine in this case) mapped onto a circle, but in hindsight that's probably not intuitive to most people
- i'd appreciate if enjl could elaborate on the "fixed teleportation distance" comment. the maximum distance is capped, but you can cancel it with jump (as expressed by the sign at the start)
i feel a bit torn here, because i can't really submit a level to a contest that i myself don't have fun playing, but finding the right balance is hard qAq
(also, i'm curious to know if anyone that's played the level has gotten the moon legitimately, it's probably my favorite challenge overall)
- i'd appreciate if enjl could elaborate on the "fixed teleportation distance" comment. the maximum distance is capped, but you can cancel it with jump (as expressed by the sign at the start)
Teleporting a shorter distance than the maximum is hardly ever a viable option because at least a third of the travel path is usually occupied by blocks. Even in situations where it would be an option, the wait-time-based distance makes it difficult to plan your move, to the point where I never felt in control of teleportation but rather at the mercy of several timings I needed to learn through trial and error. I would have preferred if the teleportation was ALWAYS at the maximum length, so that the timing element for the teleportation distance was removed, and cancelling the wait time could instead be used to make up for mistimed teleportation initiation.
the wait-time-based distance makes it difficult to plan your move, to the point where I never felt in control of teleportation but rather at the mercy of several timings I needed to learn through trial and error.
yea, i do suppose it would've been better to ease the player into it with more setups at the start which would let them get much more used to the speed at which the reticle moves.
First off, congrats to all the participants. i haven't played many of the submissions myself (as i'm waiting for the episode) but there were some great entries this year. My Eyes Shine Bright with the City Lights definitely deserved to win.
First off, I'm shocked that I got as high as I did. I was aiming for top 20 but did not expect 7th especially for a level that is very light on custom lua (it was only the second level I ever made with a working lua file, and none of it made by me). I'm really happy with how it turned out and that all the judges liked it (especially the perfect score from James). thank you all for playing it - and the bonus medals!
the music is from an older Falcom game (which since submitting the level actually got confirmed for an official release under the name The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails. Like a lot of Falcom OSTs, it's fantastic and fits well with SMBX levels IMO.
as for Enjl's suggestion on it missing a massive finale, i didn't think of that, but i do agree it might have been thought of and made if I was more knowledgeable with lua. I'll bare it in mind for the future.
Reading the judge comments for my level there was suppose to be a Toad filter in the lua code itself which is why I didn't think mentioning it in the submission though I guess that code either didn't work which is strange because it worked when I tested it or the code was removed. Also I am not sure if the four cherries that I accidently left in at the very top of the first section which I asked to be removed were left in or not judging from the comments. Guess even with being able to kill all the enemies with vegetables it was still too many enemies for people to handle. Hopefully I can improve and make my levels less enemy spammy someday without them becoming boring.
Hopefully I can improve and make my levels less enemy spammy someday without them becoming boring.
My recommendation: Try some other levels, both in SMBX and in other games, and see how they craft difficulty. It's rarely about the quantity of enemies, but about how they're positioned instead.
Congrats to MrDoubleA and SetaYoshi for getting on Fiiiiiiiirst Place.
YAYY FOR EVERYONE WHO PARTICIPATED IN THIS HONOURABLE CONTEST
I can't Say what theme would have done in the next Undecided.
Thanks.
I kinda expected the results once I have seen others' entries. They are all good levels and somehow scattered around mid spots and top spots.
I appreciate the judges' compliments on using teleporters and the roses well. Since ShadowstarX is a massive Touhou fan, I figured to throw Touhou content in my level as a core mechanic. I handpicked 3 special Touhou remixes because of how calm (in the mountains/caves), groovy (in the mansion) and excited (in the reactor) they are. They are very good music. Anyway, the ideas are from Koishi Komeiji's traits, such as using roses as projectiles and teleporting via telephones, as well as putting hats everywhere. Glad to see some recognised the Touhou aesthetics. I also resorted to using newspaper/notes/dialogues to make subtle references. Kinda weird for Mechdragon777 not coring his level with Seija Kijin's flippy gimmicks (since Seija is his favourite character idk) instead of a Kaizo platforming level.
The reviews are almost expected from the day when I started a sub-thread asking others on improvements. "Is it too long", "Am I repeating ideas", "I can't piece setups properly without rooms.lua". In the end, only one (the person who made the Foyer level) told me that it is fine and that some segments can be trimmed. Basically, the original version is so much more different than this one. (Mountain/cave section trimmed and mansion hub remade from topdown.)
I was thinking to have a good level structure, in which it starts on the mountains/caves with the roses. Then in the mansion, I would introduce normal teleporters and combine roses in the previous sections. After the confrontation, I then introduce custom teleporters that can be activated to access the reactor, whilst combining everything in the whole level. Out of inspiration from Subzero Heroes' Corridor of Nature, I was supposed to make an autoscroll with growing vines as a climax, which is the main criticism because of how brutal and long it is, while simultaneously gave up on autoscrolling because I am an incapable programmer.
Now I think about it, it is really too long compared to the original (5 rooms in the mansion for teleporters only + 5 rooms combining with the roses before unlocking a special telephone). But yet there are so much more setups to explore (in which some are repetitive because I ran out of ideas). It is too long that I have to make a map to show the number of rooms in total. It is kind of unnecessary to have.
Being good at coding lua is really demanding, as well as tiresome considering I spent days troubling with the lag while fully resetting the room and that rooms.lua isn't compatible with custom autoscrolling, before giving up. Like I said back in the Chocolate Contest thread, it is demanding to have custom assets and good programming skills, as well as some special features to make it very unique. I am just not capable enough to handle the scripts and ideas.
Recto Cymol, in my opinion, is the most mind-blowing level with the sheer amount of effort put in. It deserves its place well. At the same time, some of the level's placement feels out of place. I read the judges notes and I am kinda surprised that some aren't lower/higher than it is.
A lot of good levels this time. So much more variety than the previous year's contest. Though it is a shame I can't keep up the quality in a shorter timeframe.
it is demanding to have custom assets and good programming skills
If you look at 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 10th places you will find high-ranking levels that use very few custom content outside of things readily available on the forums. The Imperfect Foyer in particular is a level that showcases how far you can go with just clean presentation, progression and a smooth vibe alone - at its core it's very simple iterative roto-disc setups.
Programming and drawing are demanding and time-consuming, but they are not required to make a good level. I recommend decreasing complexity and focusing on making fun levels with simple ideas, to hone that skill and make it easier for you to feel comfortable working with more complex ideas in the future.
